If
by Insane Troll Logic
Summary: This won't last. For the challenge on Raising Hell. [MA, ML, ARachel. That's right. Coexisting.]


**Title**: If  
**Rating:** PG  
**Pairing:** MA, ML, A/RB (they can all coexist! I swear!)  
**Spoilers**: General series, the Berrisford Agenda  
**Warnings**: Character death.  
**Summary**: It won't last. [for the challenge on Raising Hell. Prompt: "I understand with love comes pain, but why did I have to love so much?"  
**Author's note**: I usually write ML. This is MA. This does not mean I'm switching sides. I was toying with the thought of just how I could view MA as plausible and this resulted. I realize I'm going to piss both sides off, but seriously, this shipper war? Get over it. The series has been done for _years_, it's hard enough to maintain and attract people in this fandom without all the shipper wars.

* * *

_**If**_

Cemeteries are always cold. Transgenic, human, it doesn't matter, a cemetery drops the air temperature ten degrees and sends goosebumps crawling down the spine.

The cemetery is quiet today. They almost always are, but today is worse than most. The man stands in front of the grave, hands shoved in the pockets of a denim jacket. He hasn't been crying. Just standing there, watching the grave.

_Rachael Berrisford._

"How long?" a voice asks from behind him.

"Four years, five months and six days," he recites. There was a time when he had it down to the precise minute, the precise hour, the precise second. It's not quite so bad anymore. The burning pain has turned into a dull ache.

"Two years for me," Max says. "Exactly."

"I didn't think you were coming back," Alec says. "You left us with a whole lot of shit."

"I'm sorry," she says.

But she's not sorry. She'd run. She'd hit a rough patch and she'd run just like she always did. Like she'd do again given the chance. He turns around to see her to take a good look at Max for the first time in two years, but before he can focus, her lips crash against his own.

He kisses back reflexively. He's still male after all and Max is still drop dead gorgeous. He can taste her cherry lip gloss, a faint hint of peppermint toothpaste and her tears.

It's the tears that stop him that make him remember where he is, who this is. He pushes her back. He can smell it now, knows what this is. "You're going into heat," he says plainly. "You're probably going to want to lock yourself up for a few days."

"What if I want to stay here for you."

It's everything he can do to keep himself from taking her up on her offer, but this is something he can't do, not today and definitely not now. "We can't, Max," he says. "It's not that I don't want to. It's just… If—"

The last word hangs in the cold cemetery air. _If it hadn't been for Rachel lying underground here, if it hadn't been for Logan two years dead somewhere in this very cemetery, if it hadn't been for Max's two year absence when things got bad. If—_

_If he hadn't been Alec and she hadn't been Max._

* * *

He is there when Logan dies even though she isn't. He watches the slow struggle for life over death with the bone crushing knowledge that they've run out of miracles. 

Him and Logan, they've never been friends. Not exactly. But things change over time and as they got close to the end, it had been Alec on the Eyes Only missions and not Max. They had grown apart. That isn't a surprise. She runs a city after all and Logan saves the world. Alec is the true intermediary, stealing food from Logan and annoying the hell out of Max. He broaches the void between the two.

He likes to think that by the end of it all, he will be a friend to the both of them.

Only the end is already here.

Logan gasps for breath. His face is starting to swell. Alec can hardly look at him without remembering the first time. When he'd stood and watched Max touch the bleeding Logan with nothing but the satisfaction of a job well done.

He isn't that guy anymore, can't go back to the cold unfeeling soldier who'd gloated as another man died. And Logan was half the reason why.

It was an accident, Alec knows. A panic in Terminal City and the accidental brush of skin on skin that neither of them noticed and it was too late. Even after the transfusion, he'd just been too far gone.

"Take care of her," Logan whispers and if it weren't for his enhanced senses, Alec would have missed it completely. "Keep her safe."

It's two years to the day before he sees her again.

* * *

And he forgets, you know, forgets the look on her face as she smiles and forgets the way her hair fell across her face (it's in curls now, thick spiraling curls that make her seem younger.) Forgets everything about her when she runs away (they taught that at Manticore, bury it all so deep not even he can find it.) 

When she comes back, it all floods back and suddenly he can't stop watching.

She left him in charge whether she realized it or not. She left Alec with an army of transgenics for two years and everyone's still more or less intact (he isn't and she isn't, but he won't admit that to anyone but himself.) Nothing blew up, nothing exploded and it's not her city anymore.

It's his.

He's not sure if he can ever forgive her for that.

* * *

So, two weeks later in Crash when her heat is over and Terminal City is crisis free, he's got to wonder why his lips are locked on hers, why his hands are running through the tangle of curls and why he can taste the salty tears running down her cheeks. 

This won't work, he knows, won't last. In his head, he counts a thousand ways it could have been different, a thousand ways they might have had a chance.

_If you didn't leave._

_If I didn't know the real you._

_If it weren't for Logan._

_If it weren't for Rachael._

_If I wasn't Alec and you weren't Max._

This is going to end badly. Desperation is not a good foundation for anything, much less a lasting relationship and Logan had trusted him to keep her safe. He tries to do the right thing, tries to make the smart decision and not the easy one.

He's not the same Alec she left behind.

_If we weren't so broken, maybe…_

He can't stop.

(end)


End file.
